The only difference here that I think is really meaningful is that bike lanes generally aren't already fully built out and at full capacity.
If we didn't believe bike lanes would induce demand for biking we wouldn't say "let's get people out of cars" as one of our major reasons for adding bike lanes. We accept - even hope! - from the start that more bike lanes will cause more biking. It has upsides compared to car commuting.
But because we don't have an already saturated, congested network of bike lanes, we aren't going to be hitting the limits of "why didn't adding more parallel bike lanes reduce the amount of congestion?" - the congestion just doesn't exist, and we'd have to have a LOT more biking to make it exist. And if we get to that point, it's a big win! Fears of future bike traffic should not stop us from building bike lanes.
Everything else about why "they're different" seems like handwaving.
If we didn't believe bike lanes would induce demand for biking we wouldn't say "let's get people out of cars" as one of our major reasons for adding bike lanes. We accept - even hope! - from the start that more bike lanes will cause more biking. It has upsides compared to car commuting.
But because we don't have an already saturated, congested network of bike lanes, we aren't going to be hitting the limits of "why didn't adding more parallel bike lanes reduce the amount of congestion?" - the congestion just doesn't exist, and we'd have to have a LOT more biking to make it exist. And if we get to that point, it's a big win! Fears of future bike traffic should not stop us from building bike lanes.
Everything else about why "they're different" seems like handwaving.